Car insurance confused

Green_hopeful

I got my renewal notice for 2 February from Aviva so had a look yesterday. My renewal quote is £693. Down a little bit from last year. I did the money saving comparison search and the cheapest was AXA for £500. 

Aviva didn’t come up at all. Not sure if they are one of the companies it doesn’t show but I switched to them last year so I guess they were on. I then got a quote from Aviva on their website and it comes up as £574. So a bit more than AXA but a £120 cheaper than my renewal quote. 

So I rang to see if they could work it out. My husband had a minor parking bump last month so I had included it in the online quote but he as an old bump due to come off on 25 January so I thought they would even out.  None of the claims have been on my insurance as it’s always been his car. The quote on the phone went up to £915. 

i asked why the online quote was £574 and the phone quote was £915 and she said it’s because the online quote is the price for a new customer. I asked if it has already taken off the old bump as it would be clear before the renewal date and she didn’t know. I asked to be put through to the cancellation team to see if they had a better explanation but apparently they don’t have one! 

I can see the online quote has 10 per cent discount on the main policy but that doesn’t account for the difference.  I thought they were not allowed to give new customers preferential prices. She didn’t seem bothered by me not automatically renewing and starting a new policy with them. 

Anyone know if this is normal or have an explanation. 

400ixl

They are not allowed to give different prices for the same channel.

You engaged across different channels, online and phone and the can have different prices across different channels.

DullGreyGuy

They must not charge a new customer less than they would a renewing customer who is buying the same product via the same channel. 

Note that the regulators have stated that buying via an aggregator is a different channel to buying directly on the insurers website. Phone is obviously a different channel to online. Your initial renewal would be based on the channel you bought from last year but if you switch to the phone for a requote then it becomes a phone sale. 

A recent accident will have substantially more impact than a historic one so you would expect a spike that isnt offset by a claim 5 years ago dropping off.

Green_hopeful

DullGreyGuy said:

They must not charge a new customer less than they would a renewing customer who is buying the same product via the same channel. 

Note that the regulators have stated that buying via an aggregator is a different channel to buying directly on the insurers website. Phone is obviously a different channel to online. Your initial renewal would be based on the channel you bought from last year but if you switch to the phone for a requote then it becomes a phone sale. 

A recent accident will have substantially more impact than a historic one so you would expect a spike that isnt offset by a claim 5 years ago dropping off.

The recent claim isn’t against my insurance. It’s a named driver on his own car. I get that makes him a worst risk but £215 seems like quite a lot. 

DullGreyGuy

Green_hopeful said:

DullGreyGuy said:

They must not charge a new customer less than they would a renewing customer who is buying the same product via the same channel. 

Note that the regulators have stated that buying via an aggregator is a different channel to buying directly on the insurers website. Phone is obviously a different channel to online. Your initial renewal would be based on the channel you bought from last year but if you switch to the phone for a requote then it becomes a phone sale. 

A recent accident will have substantially more impact than a historic one so you would expect a spike that isnt offset by a claim 5 years ago dropping off.

The recent claim isn’t against my insurance. It’s a named driver on his own car. I get that makes him a worst risk but £215 seems like quite a lot. 

The only difference which vehicle makes is if it impacts your NCD or not, the impact to the underlying premium its irrelevant if they've been tailgating in their own car or your car. Premium broadly represents the level of risk they pose, an increase in premiums after an incident isnt done in an attempt to recover the prior outlay. 

Green_hopeful

Well I took the online policy out today. It wouldn’t let me use my existing account. I thought perhaps because it was a new policy. It then said it would have to decline my policy. I was a bit stressed. I rang and after a lot of time on hold it turned out there was a discrepancy in the spelling of my first name. It is spelt with a hyphen and somehow on the quote it had been spelt without the hyphen. The lady thought it was quite funny in the end. They merged my ‘two’ accounts and the nice lady stayed online while I managed to log out and in again. I have a lot of trouble with autocorrect changing the spelling so I normally have the auto complete on so that it gets typed in automatically but I guess it could have been me not pay attention.